Sanctuary in The Sky by John Brunner Page B

through a moment’s loss of control over his tongue. And somehow Lang was responsible. He felt it in his bones, he knew it—and at the same time knew that nothing Lang had said or done could explain his idiotic lapse.
    He got to his feet with unsteady dignity, set down his half-full glass of wine with a hurt look at Lang, and walked away among the bushes.
    “Well!” said Usri after a further pause.. “I’m surprised you let him get away with that. If an Alchmid had said such a thing to me, I’d have broken his teeth in and sent him to be food for the males.”
    “Oh, he won’t get away with it, don’t worry,” said Ligmer through clenched teeth. “There’s not much anyone can do to him here on Waystation; he’ll just hide among his fellow Majkos here and the Glaithes will prevent us from dragging him out. But he won’t be able to leave the station again unless he has it in mind to commit suicide. I’ll have instructions given to the purser of his ship, just in case he tries to brazen it out and pretend nothing happened.”
    He turned to Lang and half rose to give a sort of bow. “I must thank you, distinguished sir,” he said. “I did not see what you were driving at when you pressed him for his opinion; I see now that you were cunningly provoking him into voicing subversive views. It is a service we Cathrodynes will appreciate.”
    “You have nothing to thank me for,” said Lang, and his gaze was dispassionate and hard. “I am neutral. As it were, I am a citizen of Waystation, and your national disputes are none of my concern.”
    He raised his glass and emptied it. When he set it down again, his manner had-changed completely.
    “I have been wandering through what I gather you call the tourist circuit,” he said. “It is impressive.”
    “And damnably difficult to find your way around,” said Usri shortly. “Forever changing places with itself. Yesterday I came down Chute Number Radium to the City; today I had to come right through the Caves to get here, and cross a bit of the Ocean. That I don’t mind so much—the weird juice they have in it instead of water dries like magic once you come ashore again. But going through the Caves was a nuisance.”
    “Why?” said Lang, raising an eyebrow. “I haven’t seen them.”
    “You will, if you’re normal.” Usri gave a sound halfway between a grunt and a laugh. “Even if you’re not. By non- Pag standards, that is. Other people seem to think we’re pretty peculiar because we won’t give in to any male until he’s proven he’s worth it by beating us in single combat— but it’s all a matter of attitude. So we don’t go there for fun, the way most people do.”
    “It’s a—shall we say—place of exotic amusements?”
    “More of them than anything else. One thing that does tend to support our historico-geneticists when they say that the people of other planets are degenerate culls of a primal Pagr stock is that we like our matings to be straight—Pag to Pag. In the Caves over yonder most visitors from other planets seem to go for a stock different from their own. You get Cathrodynes wanting Glaithes, Alchmids mucking around with Lubarrians—ugh!” She made a disgusted face. “Degenerate!”
    “Yet your own males will take Alchmid women, as you admitted a little while ago,” said Lang curtly. “So your males are of a degenerate stock and your females aren’t?” Before Usri could muster an answer to that, he had leaned forward on the table to look again at the picture of the ship embalmed on Pagr in solidified lava.
    “How many ships are known to have been preserved on Pagr?” he said. Usri hesitated, as though she had been going to say something totally different, and a small frown creased her red-brown forehead. But so completely had Lang the attitude of one who has forgotten the previous subject that she let it pass and answered his new question instead.
    “We’ve found fifteen—possibly. All in strata laid down about the